Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like стр 20.

and so we say farewellThe travelogues made by James A. Fitzpatrick (190280) were a supporting feature of cinema programmes from 1925 onwards. With the advent of sound, the commentaries to Fitzpatrick Traveltalks became noted for their closing words: And its from this paradise of the Canadian Rockies that we reluctantly say farewell to Beautiful Banff/ And as the midnight sun lingers on the skyline of the city, we most reluctantly say farewell to Stockholm, Venice of the North/ With its picturesque impressions indelibly fixed in our memory, it is time to conclude our visit and reluctantly say farewell to Hong Kong, the hub of the Orient Frank Muir and Denis Nordens notable parody of the genre Bal-ham Gateway to the South first written for radio circa 1948 and later performed on a record album by Peter Sellers (1958) accordingly contained the words, And so we say farewell to this historic borough

and still they comePhrase for the remorseless oncoming of those you (probably) dont like. From John Greenleaf Whittiers poem The Kings Missive (1881): The pestilent Quakers are in my path! / Some we have scourged, and banished some, / Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come. The chorus from The Astronomer in Jeff Waynes musical album The War of the Worlds (1978) is: The chances of anything coming from Mars / Are a million to one, but still, they come The title of a book by Elliott Barkan is And Still They Come: Immigrants and American Society, 1920 to the 1990s (1998). One is also reminded of Lewis Carrolls lines about the oysters in The Walrus and the Carpenter: And thick and fast they came at last, / And more, and more, and more. Then there is this from Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.v.1 (1606): Hang out our banners on the outward walls; / The cry is still, They come! One million. And still they came headline over peace march report in The Observer (16 February 2003).

and that aint hay! Meaning, And thats not to be sniffed at/that isnt negligible often with reference to money. The title of the 1943 Abbott and Costello film that is said to have popularized this (almost exclusively US) exclamation was It Aint Hay. But in the same year Mickey Rooney exclaimed And that aint hay! as he went into the big I Got Rhythm number (choreographed by Busby Berkeley) in the film Girl Crazy (the scene being set, appropriately, in an agricultural college).

and that, my dears, is how I came to marry your grandfather As though at the end of a long and rambling reminiscence by an old woman. Also used by the American humorist Robert Benchley (18891945) possibly in capsule criticism of the play Abies Irish Rose and so quoted by Diana Rigg in No Turn Unstoned (1982).

and thats official Journalistic formula used when conveying, say, the findings of some newly published report. The aim, presumably, is to dignify the fact(s) so presented but also to do it in a not too daunting manner. A cliché condemned by Keith Waterhouse in Daily Mirror Style (1981). Yes, the Prime Ministers condition is satisfactory and thats official! Private Eye (1962); In America, there are no bad people, only people who think badly of themselves. And thats official. California has a state commission to promote self-esteem, there is a National Council for Self-Esteem with its own bulletin Independent on Sunday (8 May 1994).

and thats the way it is The authoritative but avuncular TV anchorman Walter Cronkite (b. 1916) retired from anchoring the CBS TV Evening News after nineteen years for most of which he had concluded with these words. On the final occasion, he said: And thats the way it is, Friday March 6, 1981. Goodnight.

and the band played onThings went on as usual, no notice was taken. A phrase from a song, The Band Played On, written by John F. Palmer in 1895. A non-fiction book by Randy Shilts about the first years of AIDS was called And the Band Played On and filmed (US 1993). This title presumably alludes to the earlier play by Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band, also about male homosexuals (filmed US 1970).

and the best of luck! Ironic encouragement. Frankie Howerd, the British comedian (?191792), claimed in his autobiography, On the Way I Lost It (1976), to have given this phrase to the language:

It came about when I introduced into radio Variety Bandbox [late 1940s] those appallingly badly sung mock operas starringMadame Vera Roper (soprano)Vera would pause for breath before a high C and as she mustered herself for this musical Everest I would mutter, And the best of luck! Later it became, And the best of British luck! The phrase is so common now that I frequently surprise people when I tell them it was my catchphrase on Variety Bandbox. Partridge/Catch Phrases suggests, however, that the British luck version had already been a Second World War army phrase meaning the exact opposite of what it appeared to say and compares it with a line from a First World War song: Over the top with the best of luck / Parley-voo.

and the next object is ---In the radio panel game Twenty Questions, broadcast by the BBC from 1947 to 1976, a mystery voice most memorably Norman Hackforths would inform listeners in advance about the object the panellists would then try to identify by asking no more than twenty questions. Hackforth would intone in his deep, fruity voice: And the next object is The odour in the larder [or some such poser].